About Ableton Live

Ableton AG (founded in 1999)is a Berlin-based music software company that produces and distributes the production and performance program Ableton Live and a collection of related instruments and sample libraries, as well as their own hardware controller Ableton Push.

The first version of Ableton Live was released in 2001.
Nowadays exist off more than 270 people from 30 different countries divided between our headquarters in Berlin and our offices in Los Angeles and Tokyo.

Ableton announced in March 2007 there collaboration with Cycling ’74, producers of Max/MSP.
This collaboration is not directly based on Live or Max/MSP, but rather combines the two companies’ strengths in a new product.

Ableton Live is currently in its tenth version. There are three versions of the software available for purchase: Live 10 Standard (the core software for music performance and creation), Live 10 Suite (Ableton Live, Max for Live + all of Ableton’s software instruments/effects) and Live 10 Intro (an introductory version of Live with fewer track and effect slots). Ableton Live is designed to be used with a wide range of USB and MIDI controllers, as well as instruments and virtual instruments.

In January 2009 the Ableton/Cycling ’74 product “Max for Live” was announced. “Max for Live” makes it possible to create Max/MSP patches directly inside of Live. The patches act like other plug-ins in Live do, supporting preset saving, automation, and other features. It is possible to create both customized hardware plug-ins and patches as well as actions within those plug-ins that control every aspect of Live, essentially anything that can be clicked with a mouse.

The company constructed the Push controller for Live 9 in cooperation with Akai Professionall.It gives access to every element within the Digital audio workstation from the one unit, playing notes on a device or instrument, sequencing melodic notes and parameters, and triggering clips via a 64 pad matrix.
In 2015, Ableton released the second iteration of the Push, Ableton Push 2, which features an onboard display and better integration with the Live software.

In April 2015, Ableton published the hardcover book Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers written by Dennis DeSantis who is the Head of Documentation at Ableton and formerly a sound designer for Native Instruments. The work is organized according to three main categories: Problems of Beginning, Problems of Progressing, and Problems of Finishing and aims primarily to address “the non-technical aspects of the process of making music.”
While it shows images only of Ableton Live, the information is not specific to Ableton Live.

Ableton holds many music production sessions and seminars to learn to use their software, and licenses “certified Ableton trainers.”

In June 2017 Ableton acquired Cycling ’74, developers of the digital signal processing environment Max/Msp and its integrated version Max for Live.

In the first quarter of 2018, Ableton live10 was officially released, and the release of the new version added some new features to Ableton Push2: New melodic step sequencing layout, MIDI note view.